Human Security Fact Sheets

In late 2016 — just months after the signing of the Jordan Compact — the WANA Institute and Mercy Corps set out to measure the impact of Syrian labour on Jordan’s economy. This research initiative, which has spanned two years, has resulted in several publications. The key statistics included in the ...

Despite the military defeat of Daesh, many of the drivers which initially encouraged individuals to join a violent extremist group have not been addressed. Radicalisation does not occur in a vacuum and it has been increasingly shown that individuals adhere to violent extremist ideology because of co...

The battle with violent extremism is predominantly ideological. The military defeat of violent extremist groups only constitutes one piece of a large puzzle; the rest remains in countering the broader radical ideology. This fact sheet discusses current media approaches to managing radical narratives...

The Jordan Compact is an aid partnership drafted at the Supporting Syria and the Region Conference that took place in London in February 2016. The partnership aims to help meet long-term development goals rather than provide short-term humanitarian assistance to support host communities that have be...

It has been suggested that 3,000 of the 20,000 foreign fighters who have travelled to join Daesh have been women, and while focus has primarily been upon those who came from the West, women from the WANA region were also drawn to the cause. A discussion about the relationship between gender and viol...

The Jordanian government began granting Syrian refugees limited employment rights in April 2016. This fact sheet provides a snapshot of the labour market dynamics — both in terms of distribution across sectors and wage levels — that frame the context in which expanded worker rights have been provide...

Think Tanks can be defined as policy research institutes that conduct and disseminate research, and advise policy-makers to design effective public policy. There is surprisingly little knowledge on what the role of think tanks is, why academic research is not widely used to inform policy-making, as ...

Although modern Islamism stems from Egypt’s Muslim
Brotherhood, the ideologies that developed in its wake went far beyond its founder’s aspirations for a return to religious fundamentals. This ideological evolution is best evidenced in the creation of al-Qaeda. This factsheet is part of a broader s...

In 2006, as Iraq’s Shia majority watched the execution of former President Saddam Hussein, one clear victor emerged from America’s controversial war: Iran. Iraq’s transition from Iran’s fierce enemy, to probable ally was a major success for the Islamic Republic and one of the biggest shifts in the r...

The fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1924 triggered a crisis in the Muslim world, challenging Islam’s position in the world order. Particularly with the rise of the nation-state, Muslims’ transnational Ummah, or community, faced potential political diminution. This crisis provoked a new wave of thinkin...

The 2003 Iraq War was a US-led invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein and the Ba’athist regime from power. The principal justification for the invasion, as argued by the US and UK, was that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). As with the 1990/91 Gulf War, the Iraqi milita...

On 2 August 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait; six days later Saddam Hussein announced the annexation of the small Gulf state as an Iraqi province. By 16 January Iraqi troops remained in Kuwait and a day later an international coalition led by the United States (US) commenced ‘Operation Desert Storm’. The al...

The Iran-Iraq War was a conventional armed conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Ba’athist Iraqi Republic. It began with Iraq’s invasion of Iran on 22 September 1980 and ended with a ceasefire commencing 20 August 1988.

After the death of the Prophet Mohammad in 632 CE, the Muslim community diverged over how to select the next leader of the Islamic community they had formed on the Arabian Peninsula. One group supported succession by Ali, the Prophet Mohammad’s closest male family member. Many of these believers wou...

The Arab-Israeli War, also referred to as the Six-Day War, was a bloody and decisive battle fought between Israel and an Egyptian-Syrian-Jordanian alliance. It led to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and has had a lasting impact on subsequent attempts to forge a final status peace a...

The Balfour Declaration (2 November 1917) was a statement of support by the British Government, approved by the War Cabinet, for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. At the time, the region was part of Ottoman Syria administered from Damascus. While the Declaratio...

Following Britain’s announcement that it intended to terminate its mandate over Palestine in 1947, a plan to partition Palestine into two states joined by an economic union was devised and adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (Resolution 181, November 1947).

Settlements remain one of the most controversial aspects of the Israeli occupation. Israel’s systematic and expansive policy of developing Jewish communities represents a threat to Palestinian statehood and undermines Israel’s international reputation.

The Sykes-Picot agreement divided the Levant into spheres of influence between France and Britain. These lines still exist today as Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria. The political and demographic upheaval created by these new borders continued well after independence.

The Oslo Accords (1993-1999) were a series of agreements forged in an attempt to negotiate an Israel-Palestine peace agreement. Although the Accords were ultimately ineffective, they represented a breakthrough in Israel-Palestine relations and have shaped the administration of the Occupied Palestini...